Chandler's Ford Today

You are here: Home / Community / Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 126)

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 126)

By Leave a Comment

A quiet Christmas; a Fox runs by; an old friend dies; spirits lifted by a butterfly; a Presidency for Barry; “21 years of our journal”; the Brenans move house; foot and mouth disease restrictions, and searching for Daphne.

December 7th 1967: “I wakened cold this morning”, writes Gran:

…and it was truly a very bitter day.  This afternoon I dashed to Southampton to do some Christmas shopping and spent an enjoyable little while at Fowlers’ shop, paying my account and giving my Christmas orders.  There have been staff changes in the past year, but it was nice to see one or two familiar faces.

News of Katherine is encouraging later that day, and Andrew is as mischievous as ever:

Katherine is still improving and is quite happy settled in hospital.  Grandma Brenan has arrived and is coping well and Andrew is quite back to form!  Today he took the handle off the larder door and Grandma could not get things out for dinner.  She had to get a neighbour to open the door with a screwdriver!

Six inches of snow fall on the following day, Gran saying the blizzard drives snow into the doorways and packs it against the windows.  “Of course, it looked beautiful”, she adds.  A knock on the door late that day surprises her but it is: “Barry himself, with Julian and Ricky.  He had come by road and found little difficulty until he reached Hocombe Road, where the car skidded on the corner”.

We are only in Chandler’s Ford for a couple of days, Dad needing to be there to attend the Old Symondians’ Dinner in Winchester.  He and I, Gran records, “went to look for Redpolls in the Alder swamp in Hiltingbury, and saw four…”

A new bird for Ricky – Lesser Redpoll’s love Alder seeds.  Image by Tony Sutton via Flickr.

Further positive words from Jane on Katherine’s condition at this time is followed by the news that, “…they have secured the house they wanted at Pattingham and feel it is most suitable for them, and on a hill, which should be better for Katherine”.  Gran learns a few days later, in a Christmas card from Jane, Stuart, “Kate” and Andrew that their new address is to be 4 The Elms Paddock, Moor Lane, Pattingham, near Wolverhampton.  “It has a nice country flavour”, she writes.

Norris and Gran risk leaving Mother alone briefly for a “dash to Farley Mount” on December 19th.  The east wind is bitter but they enjoy the winter colours and the absence of other people and their litter.  Gran writes:

We saw several Bullfinches, a Magpie and two or three Fieldfares.  We could not go into the forestry enclosures as there were warning notices to keep out owing to Foot and Mouth Disease restrictions and all the farms had similar notices and disinfectant pads at the gates.  Some also had tubs of disinfectant and notices requesting people to put their feet in before entering the precincts of the farms.  A wise precaution but it confined us to the area of downland outside, which, however, quite satisfied us.

Winter at Farley Mount. Image by Jim Champion via Flickr.

At Christmas time, Gran is unwell with what she discovers later is, “…a particularly violent form of Asian ‘flu, which according to Television, Radio and newspapers, reached epidemic proportions during Christmas…”.  The Day itself, she describes as “…the quietest I have had for years!  Just as well, perhaps, in view of the presence of ‘the bug’ but I have been better today, only a nagging cough”.

Presents received include:

…a lovely Irish linen tablecloth  and napkins from Kathleen Rowsell, “Flowers of the Coast” by Ian Hepburn from Margaret, gloves from Diana and “The Flora of Hertfordshire” by Dr Dony from Barry, Jane Elizabeth and the family.  This last has an added interest as Dr Dony has included Barry’s records and published his name with them.

Gran is building a nice collection of these New Naturalist books.

Gran is unable to attend Church in Compton, to her regret, but with Norris joining her and Grampa for the meal, she says. “…it turned out better than I hoped… Julian and Ricky also called in and brought me some very pretty little notelets”.  Julian and I are in Chandler’s Ford for the Christmas and New Year holiday, staying nearby with our mother, but we drop in on Gran frequently over the period, usually to watch television in the evening.

Joan Adelaide Goater - her journal about Chandler's Ford.

December 31st:

Tonight is the last of the old year, 1967, and, when I close my book I shall have completed twenty-one years of our journal, faithfully written as promised in 1946.

This year has been very frustrating in many ways, particularly in the restriction of my liberty and my inability to go out with Brother as much as we had hoped now that he is free to do as he wishes.  But the outings we have had have been both interesting and fruitful… I have painted twenty flowers this Summer to add to my collection, which is now well over five hundred!

She writes something of her anxiety over Katherine, saying:

No-one will ever know how close I became to this little one during the time I looked after her here, and how very dear to me she has become.  Perhaps her affliction found an echoing sympathy in my heart…

1968

January 2nd: “Ricky’s thirteenth birthday”, and “God bless him”, she writes (as she does for everyone’s birthday on its due date):

Brother and I were going to take Ricky to Alresford in the hope of seeing Water Rails, but Brother arrived by bus, his car having broken down so we could not go.  Instead I took Ricky to Compton and we walked up the lane beyond the Church to look for birds.

Alresford Pond – not visited this time; my destiny with Water Rail “on hold”.  Image by Tristan Ferne via Flickr.

I remember – we were constrained by Foot and Mouth disease notices, but, as Gran writes, “A good deal of time and patience were eventually rewarded with the sight of a party of Bramblings…They were new to Ricky”.  Over the ensuing years I saw several new bird species on my birthday.  This was the first.

A cold and snowy day out with Margaret Burnside, to introduce her to good botanizing localities for the Spring and Summer, gives Gran a moment of pleasure while scouting out the Lizard Orchid site on the disused railway at Downton.  “…it was here that we had our great excitement, she records:

A dog Fox was running along the top of the embankment just below the overhanging summit, pursued by a dog and running straight towards us.  It was in sight for several minutes until, just after it passed us, it was able to run through a gap in the overhang and disappear over the embankment.  It was the finest view I had ever had of a Fox and it quite made my day.

“…the finest view I had ever had…” – Image courtesy of satire knight via Flickr.

It appears that Jill Harding, daughter of Gran’s greatest friend Mary, is about to start a new life in Canada, for Gran, on an otherwise “uneventful afternoon” is visited by Mary, who tells her of “the safe arrival of Jill in Vancouver, where Jill and Dennis Brewster [daughter and son-in-law of Tommy and Bob Fowler] are looking after her until she is settled”.

A second series of Monday natural history lectures, given at Southampton University, begins that evening, and Gran attends the first lecture with Norris.  “Tonight it was given by Dr D.S. Ranwell of the Nature Conservancy Furzebrook Research Station and his subject was the Conservation of Coastal Plants”, she writes, followed by five pages of notes taken at the talk.

Julian’s running and athletics career is about to “take of”.  He is fifteen years old, and Gran records with delight a letter from him on January 11th, “…as it contained an excellent photograph of him in action in a cross-country race.  His style is almost identical with Barry’s”, she says.

I’m not sure that their styles were similar. This is Dad (Barry) at a similar age.

And a few days later another letter, this time from Barry, gives her further joy.  It:

…told us that next Thursday he is to be installed President of the South London Entomological Society, and there is talk of changing its name to The British Entomological Society, in which case, Barry will be the first President of the new Society.  How proud my dear Father, his Grandpa, would have been, for he it was who started him off with his entomological equipment when he was four, and his interest has never flagged since then.  Grandpa’s hopes for the boy have been fully realized though he has not been here to share his successes.  This afternoon I made another fifteen pounds of marmalade…

“Small things” tend to fill Gran’s days.  A considerable amount of marmalade is made in many batches; there is regular badminton each week, embroidery (two table cloths for wedding presents, due in the Summer) and knitting, and reading, and sorting stamps, and plant records to compile and check.  And, “This afternoon”, she writes on the 17th:

…I rethreaded the little shell necklace which I made when a child from tiny shells found on Millbrook beach, which has now disappeared.  I find it difficult to recall but I believe the New Southampton Docks were built where I found the shells.  I had promised to rethread the necklace for Katherine.

On January 27th, Gran finishes a dress she has knitted for Anne Hockridge, saying that she took it next door to Jean, her mother, “who returned from Canada early this morning”.  She goes on: “It seems settled that they will be going later this year”.  So it seems that her much-valued neighbours of a good number of years, will be leaving Chandler’s Ford.  If so, Gran will miss them terribly.

The following day Brother arrives at The Ridge to sit with Mother, enabling Gran to join a “Natural History Society outing to the London Reservoirs of Staines and Barn Elms to bird-watch”.  She has a wonderful, though cold day, observing many ducks, including Smew (“lovely these”, she says), from the causeway of the reservoir at Staines, soon to become so familiar to me as a frequently visited birding “patch”.

The causeway between the two Staines Reservoirs, from which many a rare bird has been seen. Image by Maxwell Hamilton via Flickr.

The trip on to Barn Elms, now converted into a Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Wetland Centre, presents what Gran calls:

…some vicissitudes, when we got the coach stuck at a corner where a parked car on the corner prevented us turning, and a police car eventually came along and stopped the traffic on the main road to let us back out.

She cycles a round trip to find early-flowering plants on February 1st – Hursley Road, Baddesley Road and Hocombe Road.  She drops in on Bee Richardson, who gives her a “beautiful bunch of Cyclamen in various shades”, with which she later creates three small displays for various parts of the house.  Mid-way through her ride, in Hocombe Road, she admits ruefully that she “sat on a seat for a little while to recover from my exertion.  I have not ridden my bicycle for many weeks and I am out of condition!”

After providing lunch for ten family members on February 17th –  “Brother and Jane Elizabeth helped with the washing-up!” she says – they all walk around the Lake for some fresh air but Gran notes with disappointment that, “We only saw Moorhens on the Lake – fishermen were there, and the Lake looks very grubby, not a bit like it used to be”.  And she is grumpy later on that evening, writing:

The clocks are to be advanced one hour tonight and will remain permanently.  Some silly idea to make us conform with Central Europe.  We are slowly losing our individuality, which is a pity.

“I took a sore toe to the doctor and learned that I have strained ligaments”, she writes towards the end of the month, continuing:

I told him I was going to play badminton and he said by rights I should not jump about on the toe but told me to enjoy my badminton if I could!  This I surely did.  He has given me tablets to reduce inflammation.

A letter from Jane was most cheering.  Katherine seems much better in Pattingham and Andrew told a young friend, “There are cows at the bottom of our garden, some Ayrshires and some frozen ones!”  How I love children!

One of Andrew’s breed of “Frozen” cows.  Image by Joe Thomissen via Flickr.

Book 120

A letter received on February 23rd is less cheering though, Gran writing:

Today has been shadowed by the news of the passing of my old friend Gladys Richards, who was still playing [tennis] at over seventy years of age and seemed quite indestructible.  I have known her for over fifty years and we have been good friends for nearly as long.  I shall miss her, though I did not see her very often.

Gran used to take the train to Poole to spend a day with Gladys, about once a year.

March 7th:

This afternoon I wrote four Air-letters and posted two to Australia, one to Uganda and one to Canada.  Afterwards I did some embroidery.  My toe is most painful but Doctor yesterday said it was definitely due to faulty circulation and will take a long time to cure it.  My face is better today. [she has been suffering from an allergy, which caused her face to swell].

I have been asked by Mr Taverner to help with a bird census over five years with the idea of publishing a Bird Atlas similar to the one done for flowers.  I hope to, at any rate, do the areas near home…

Four days later, a simple event lifts Gran’s spirits, as it does every Spring:

…as we were finishing dinner I suddenly saw a Brimstone butterfly flying down the garden and could hardly contain my excitement.  Such is one of Life’s uplifting moments, and the first butterfly of Spring always provides me with one, even though, thank God, it happens every year.

And she is pleased, on the same day, “while busy with my embroidery, when Jane’s friend Margot called with her brood of four.  She is now living in Kingsway and it was nice to see her again”.

Gran, usually with Norris or Margaret Burnside, has managed several natural history outings during the Winter, though usually finding little out of the ordinary but nevertheless recording almost everything she sees.  However, March 13th counts as one of her “red-letter days”.  It follows a letter from Lady Anne Brewis with whom she corresponded several times over the Winter to plan a botanizing trip, suggesting “Wednesday for our visit to Daphne mezerion…”

“After an early lunch”, she writes, “Brother and I set out for Selborne to meet Lady Anne Brewis and three other botanists…” and she continues:

…we went to Newton Vallence to a private wood belonging to some of Lady Brewis’ friends.  Here she showed us my first ever Daphne mezerion which I had long wanted to see.  We found four plants, one of them very well open and the others in bud.  It is extremely local and sparse, and I could not take a specimen to paint.  I hope to find a friend with a plant in her garden and trust she will spare me a sprig.

Daphne mezerion – a beautifully scented shrub, common enough in gardens but very rare as a wild plant in the UK. Image courtesy of Andrew via Flickr.

Gran is keen: the very next day:

…early I phoned my friend Kit Bishop to see if she had Daphne in her garden and if she could spare me a sprig.  She had one and I dashed up to Pine Haven straight away and she and John selected the best piece for me.  I returned home in triumph and immediately set to painting it.  It was a fascinating and challenging subject, for it was an old plant and the stem was encrusted with a fine grey lichen, which was difficult to paint.  I was, however, well pleased with the results of my effort.

Article series

Related posts:

Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 64) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 77) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 112) Joan Adelaide Goater - her journal about Chandler's Ford.Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 115) Forty Years in Chandler’s Ford – a Journal (Part 137)
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.